ABSTRACT
Deburau and the art of mime in general are reflected in contemporary literature and poetry to an unprecedented degree. No mime actor before him, nor any example of mime art in general, left such an impression. Fundamentally, authors were attracted by an energy and expressiveness in the language of the body with which verbal language cannot compete. Théophile Gautier’s prose fiction explores the aesthetic implications of modelling writing on mime. Aloysius Bertrand’s prose poems explore a freedom from versification that parallels the freedom from words in mime. Balzac’s metaphors encourage the reader to imagine movement. Their understanding of mime merits comparison with the ideas of the most important thinker, teacher and performer of mime in the twentieth century: Etienne Decroux. Most fundamentally of all, Deburau and mime lead authors to conceive of a novel art of reading in which the reader is a kind of co-author of the text. In addition to these aesthetic responses, Deburau appears in prose narratives to reflect the day-to-day concerns of the working class and discontent with the socio-political status quo in the turbulent times at the close of the Restoration period and the early years of the July Monarchy.
